NATALIE BARR, HOST: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, joins us now. The Prime Minister, good morning. Breaking news overnight, with Boris Johnson's resignation. You met up with him just last week at the NATO Summit. What's your reaction to this news?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: We don't comment, of course, on the internal politics of the UK. But I wish Boris well. It is a reminder of how tough politics can be. He won a resounding victory at the last election. And a series of events have meant that he has been forced to resign, essentially by his own Party. On a personal level, we got on quite well, I have to say. And I certainly wish him well in his personal life for whatever he does in the future.
BARR: What implications will this have for Australia?
PRIME MINISTER: We have an important relationship with the UK. We have developed the AUKUS pact between Australia, United States and the United Kingdom. We have close personal links, close defence ties, close business ties. And it is absolutely critical that continue in a seamless fashion. I'm certain that it will. Our countries are so close. We await the period of, it might be up to a couple of months before we have a new Prime Minister. I hope that what occurs in the UK, for their own sake, is that we have one candidate emerge, which means they don't have to go through the long process of having a ballot of Conservative Party members, but it is in their hands and we await what happens.
BARR: I understand you did get along well with him. You gifted him a South Sydney Rabbitohs jersey. In hindsight was that a waste of a good Rabbitohs jersey?
PRIME MINISTER: A South Sydney jersey will normally make you more resilient and make you last a lot longer. And certainly, we went through some tough times. And Boris has gone through a tough time at the moment. So, the South Sydney jersey will no doubt continue to be put to good use. Look, we will work with whoever the UK Prime Minister is after they go through this process. Our relationship isn't just one between individuals, although that is important. And it was important that I meet Boris Johnson as UK Prime Minister. I had met him before when he was the Mayor of the Greater London Council. So, we had a good chat about a range of issues, about cooperation, particularly in the defence sphere. Boris Johnson was very forward-leaning and understanding that the attack on Ukraine by Russia was something that was an attack on the rules-based order and had implications not just for Europe but for the entire world. He played a very good role in making sure that all of the NATO countries and others beyond were taking Russia on and calling it out and taking action to defend the sovereign state of Ukraine. I wish him well. We are obviously from different sides of politics, but what is important is that leaders of Australia get on with leaders of the UK. I met Liz Truss and indeed did a forum at the NATO Summit with Liz, the Foreign Secretary. She is one of the candidates for prime ministership. We got on well as well, so I just await the outcome. And then whoever is successful, I will be on the phone to them, congratulating them. And I look forward to meeting up with them over a period of time.
BARR: You've spoken about your overseas trips. Obviously, you’ve been to the Quad, NATO and Ukraine, most wouldn't begrudge you that. But there now seems to be a turning of the tide. They are starting to nickname you ‘Anthony Overseas-ee’. They are having a crack at you. Are you having second thoughts on whether to go to Fiji for the Pacific Island Forum next week?
PRIME MINISTER: I've got a job to do. And my job is to represent Australia. Let Peter Dutton, when he returns from leave, if he thinks it inappropriate for me to go to the Pacific Island Forum at a time where we live with strategic competition in our region, we know the relationship between China and the Solomons and the deal that was done caused a great deal of concern here in Australia. We need to build relations with the Pacific. So, I will leave it up to Peter Dutton, as I said, when he returns from leave to make comments if he thinks that is inappropriate. I found it quite astonishing that senior members of the Opposition would equate going to a war zone in Ukraine with going on a holiday to Hawaii. I just think that says more about them than it does about myself and my putting Australia's national interest first.
BARR: Overnight, you released a new Code of Conduct. Blind trusts will be explicitly banned for Federal Ministers and their staffers. And the ‘bonk ban’ will stay in place. Why do we need that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we need is transparency. And the blind trust, so-called, aren't really blind. We had controversy after controversy from the former Government. You can do the great job of being a Minister in the Australian Government, that should be your focus. Not worrying about your personal finances into the future. And there inevitably will be conflicts raised, issues raised. We had the extraordinary circumstances of the former Attorney-General having a so-called blind trust to raise money for his legal case. That really exposed the weakness in the system, because how did people know where to donate to this so- called blind trust. I mean, it just failed the credibility test. And I want politics to be cleaned up. That's why my Government will establish an anti-corruption commission. And that's why we will have strict adherence to the code of conduct.
BARR: You've mentioned your trip to Ukraine. It must have been pretty frightening, top security going into somewhere like that, clearly worrying also for your partner, Jodie, who we haven't heard from but she is on the world stage accompanying you now. There are shots of you hugging before you go. What was it like going into a place like that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it was very confronting. The security conditions had been raised just that week. We know that, not just then but consequentially there has been blasts very close to where we were in Kyiv. We visited, for example, a building two blocks, a residential apartment block that had been blown up, two blocks from where we were. The town of Irpin was just six kilometres from Kyiv, it had whole buildings blown up, there were tanks on the streets there, just weeks ago. And the courage of the Ukrainian people in resisting a much larger army from a country, Russia that has a much larger defence force, is quite extraordinary. We went to the airport where paratroopers had taken the airport, they had landed, they got forced out. the Ukrainians blew up the runway. It's just extraordinary that the Ukrainian people defending their homeland are showing courage and resilience. And they are fighting not just for their homeland, they are fighting for all those who believe that sovereign states should be left alone, all those who believe that you should be standing up to a bully. And what we are seeing here from Russia is just that, a breach of international law, a breach of the UN Charter, something that can't be allowed to just be waived through because of the implications that are there for the world order, including in our own region.
BARR: The world has watched them do that, the Ukrainians, like you say, stand up and we are in awe. Anthony Albanese, thank you very much for your time this morning.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.